scholarly journals The Dual-Task Cost Is Due to Neural Interferences Disrupting the Optimal Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of the Competing Tasks

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Mac-Auliffe ◽  
Benoit Chatard ◽  
Mathilde Petton ◽  
Anne-Claire Croizé ◽  
Florian Sipp ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dual Task ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Neural Origin ◽  
Spatio Temporal

Dual-tasking is extremely prominent nowadays, despite ample evidence that it comes with a performance cost: the Dual-Task (DT) cost. Neuroimaging studies have established that tasks are more likely to interfere if they rely on common brain regions, but the precise neural origin of the DT cost has proven elusive so far, mostly because fMRI does not record neural activity directly and cannot reveal the key effect of timing, and how the spatio-temporal neural dynamics of the tasks coincide. Recently, DT electrophysiological studies in monkeys have recorded neural populations shared by the two tasks with millisecond precision to provide a much finer understanding of the origin of the DT cost. We used a similar approach in humans, with intracranial EEG, to assess the neural origin of the DT cost in a particularly challenging naturalistic paradigm which required accurate motor responses to frequent visual stimuli (task T1) and the retrieval of information from long-term memory (task T2), as when answering passengers’ questions while driving. We found that T2 elicited neuroelectric interferences in the gamma-band (>40 Hz), in key regions of the T1 network including the Multiple Demand Network. They reproduced the effect of disruptive electrocortical stimulations to create a situation of dynamical incompatibility, which might explain the DT cost. Yet, participants were able to flexibly adapt their strategy to minimize interference, and most surprisingly, reduce the reliance of T1 on key regions of the executive control network-the anterior insula and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex-with no performance decrement.

scholarly journals THE DUAL-TASK COST IS DUE TO NEURAL INTERFERENCES DISRUPTING THE OPTIMAL SPATIO-TEMPORAL DYNAMICS OF THE COMPETING TASKS

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Mac-Auliffe ◽  
Benoit Chatard ◽  
Mathilde Petton ◽  
Anne-Claire Croizé ◽  
Florian Sipp ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dual Task ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
List Type ◽  
Intracranial Eeg ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Dual Tasking ◽  
Dual Task Cost ◽  
Neural Origin ◽  
Spatio Temporal

ABSTRACTDual-tasking is extremely prominent nowadays, despite ample evidence that it comes with a performance cost: the Dual-Task (DT) cost. Neuroimaging studies have established that tasks are more likely to interfere if they rely on common brain regions, but the precise neural origin of the DT cost has proven elusive so far, mostly because fMRI does not record neural activity directly and cannot reveal the key effect of timing, and how the spatio-temporal neural dynamics of the tasks coincide.Recently, DT electrophysiological studies in monkeys have recorded neural populations shared by the two tasks with millisecond precision to provide a much finer understanding of the origin of the DT cost. We used a similar approach in humans, with intracranial EEG, to assess the neural origin of the DT cost in a particularly challenging naturalistic paradigm which required accurate motor responses to frequent visual stimuli (task T1) and the retrieval of information from long-term memory (task T2), as when answering passengers’ questions while driving.We found that T2 elicited neuroelectric interferences in the gamma-band (>40 Hz), in key regions of the T1 network including the Multiple Demand Network. They reproduced the effect of disruptive electrocortical stimulations to create a situation of dynamical incompatibility, which might explain the DT cost. Yet, participants were able to flexibly adapt their strategy to minimize interference, and most surprisingly, reduce the reliance of T1 on key regions of the executive control network – the anterior insula and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex – with no performance decrement.HIGHLIGHTS- First direct evidence in humans of neural interferences between two tasks.- First explanation of the Dual-Task cost at the neural level in humans.- First Dual-Tasking study with intracranial EEG in naturalistic conditions.

scholarly journals Structural and functional imaging of the hippocampus in young people at familial risk of depression

2014 ◽  
Vol 44 (14) ◽  
pp. 2939-2948 ◽  
Author(s):  
Z. N. Mannie ◽  
N. Filippini ◽  
C. Williams ◽  
J. Near ◽  
C. E. Mackay ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Young People ◽  
Familial Risk ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Resonance Spectroscopy ◽  
Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex ◽  
Parental History ◽  
History Of

BackgroundMajor depression is associated with abnormalities in the function and structure of the hippocampus. However, it is unclear whether these abnormalities might also be present in people ‘at risk’ of illness.MethodWe studied 62 young people (mean age 18.8 years) at familial risk of depression (FH+) but who had never been depressed themselves. Participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging to assess hippocampal structure and neural responses to a task designed to activate hippocampal memory networks. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy was used to measure levels of a combination of glutamine and glutamate (Glx) in the right hippocampus. A total of 59 matched controls with no history of mood disorder in a first-degree relative underwent the same investigations.ResultsHippocampal volume did not differ between FH+ participants and controls; however, relative to controls, during the memory task, FH+ participants showed increased activation in brain regions encompassing the insular cortices, putamen and pallidum as well as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). FH+ participants also had increased hippocampal levels of Glx.ConclusionsEuthymic individuals with a parental history of depression demonstrate increased activation of hippocampal-related neural networks during a memory task, particularly in brain regions involved in processing the salience of stimuli. Changes in the activity of the ACC replicate previous findings in FH+ participants using different psychological tasks; this suggests that task-related abnormalities in the ACC may be a marker of vulnerability to depression. Increased levels of Glx in the hippocampus might also represent a risk biomarker but follow-up studies will be required to test these various possibilities.

Acetaminophen Reduces Social Pain

2010 ◽  
Vol 21 (7) ◽  
pp. 931-937 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Nathan DeWall ◽  
Geoff MacDonald ◽  
Gregory D. Webster ◽  
Carrie L. Masten ◽  
Roy F. Baumeister ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Social Rejection ◽  
Neural Mechanisms ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Neural Responses ◽  
Physical Pain ◽  
Social Pain ◽  
Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex

Pain, whether caused by physical injury or social rejection, is an inevitable part of life. These two types of pain—physical and social—may rely on some of the same behavioral and neural mechanisms that register pain-related affect. To the extent that these pain processes overlap, acetaminophen, a physical pain suppressant that acts through central (rather than peripheral) neural mechanisms, may also reduce behavioral and neural responses to social rejection. In two experiments, participants took acetaminophen or placebo daily for 3 weeks. Doses of acetaminophen reduced reports of social pain on a daily basis (Experiment 1). We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure participants’ brain activity (Experiment 2), and found that acetaminophen reduced neural responses to social rejection in brain regions previously associated with distress caused by social pain and the affective component of physical pain (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula). Thus, acetaminophen reduces behavioral and neural responses associated with the pain of social rejection, demonstrating substantial overlap between social and physical pain.

scholarly journals Uncovering the spatio-temporal dynamics of value-based decision-making in the human brain: a combined fMRI–EEG study

2014 ◽  
Vol 369 (1655) ◽  
pp. 20130473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Larsen ◽  
John P. O'Doherty
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Choice Task ◽  
Binary Choice ◽  
Intraparietal Sulcus ◽  
Trial Onset ◽  
Eeg Data ◽  
Spatio Temporal

While there is a growing body of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) evidence implicating a corpus of brain regions in value-based decision-making in humans, the limited temporal resolution of fMRI cannot address the relative temporal precedence of different brain regions in decision-making. To address this question, we adopted a computational model-based approach to electroencephalography (EEG) data acquired during a simple binary choice task. fMRI data were also acquired from the same participants for source localization. Post-decision value signals emerged 200 ms post-stimulus in a predominantly posterior source in the vicinity of the intraparietal sulcus and posterior temporal lobe cortex, alongside a weaker anterior locus. The signal then shifted to a predominantly anterior locus 850 ms following the trial onset, localized to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and lateral prefrontal cortex. Comparison signals between unchosen and chosen options emerged late in the trial at 1050 ms in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, suggesting that such comparison signals may not be directly associated with the decision itself but rather may play a role in post-decision action selection. Taken together, these results provide us new insights into the temporal dynamics of decision-making in the brain, suggesting that for a simple binary choice task, decisions may be encoded predominantly in posterior areas such as intraparietal sulcus, before shifting anteriorly.

scholarly journals STAB: a spatio-temporal cell atlas of the human brain

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (D1) ◽  
pp. D1029-D1037
Author(s):  
Liting Song ◽  
Shaojun Pan ◽  
Zichao Zhang ◽  
Longhao Jia ◽  
Wei-Hua Chen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Single Cell ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Cell Types ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Molecular Characteristics ◽  
Great Effort ◽  
Brain Functions ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
The Brain

Abstract The human brain is the most complex organ consisting of billions of neuronal and non-neuronal cells that are organized into distinct anatomical and functional regions. Elucidating the cellular and transcriptome architecture underlying the brain is crucial for understanding brain functions and brain disorders. Thanks to the single-cell RNA sequencing technologies, it is becoming possible to dissect the cellular compositions of the brain. Although great effort has been made to explore the transcriptome architecture of the human brain, a comprehensive database with dynamic cellular compositions and molecular characteristics of the human brain during the lifespan is still not available. Here, we present STAB (a Spatio-Temporal cell Atlas of the human Brain), a database consists of single-cell transcriptomes across multiple brain regions and developmental periods. Right now, STAB contains single-cell gene expression profiling of 42 cell subtypes across 20 brain regions and 11 developmental periods. With STAB, the landscape of cell types and their regional heterogeneity and temporal dynamics across the human brain can be clearly seen, which can help to understand both the development of the normal human brain and the etiology of neuropsychiatric disorders. STAB is available at http://stab.comp-sysbio.org.

Neural Dynamics of Rejection Sensitivity

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (6) ◽  
pp. 945-956 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan Kross ◽  
Tobias Egner ◽  
Kevin Ochsner ◽  
Joy Hirsch ◽  
Geraldine Downey
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Rejection Sensitivity ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex ◽  
Affective Stimuli ◽  
Emotional Appraisal ◽  
Interest Level

Rejection sensitivity (RS) is the tendency to anxiously expect, readily perceive, and intensely react to rejection. This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore whether individual differences in RS are mediated by differential recruitment of brain regions involved in emotional appraisal and/or cognitive control. High and low RS participants were scanned while viewing either representational paintings depicting themes of rejection and acceptance or nonrepresentational control paintings matched for positive or negative valence, arousal and interest level. Across all participants, rejection versus acceptance images activated regions of the brain involved in processing affective stimuli (posterior cingulate, insula), and cognitive control (dorsal anterior cingulate cortex; medial frontal cortex). Low and high RS individuals' responses to rejection versus acceptance images were not, however, identical. Low RS individuals displayed significantly more activity in left inferior and right dorsal frontal regions, and activity in these areas correlated negatively with participants' self-report distress ratings. In addition, control analyses revealed no effect of viewing negative versus positive images in any of the areas described above, suggesting that the aforementioned activations were involved in rejection-relevant processing rather than processing negatively valenced stimuli per se. Taken together, these findings suggest that responses in regions traditionally implicated in emotional processing and cognitive control are sensitive to rejection stimuli irrespective of RS, but that low RS individuals may activate prefrontal structures to regulate distress associated with viewing such images.

scholarly journals A geometric representation unveils learning dynamics in primate neurons

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yarden Cohen ◽  
Elad Schneidman ◽  
Rony Paz
Keyword(s):  
De Novo ◽  
Large Fraction ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Neural Representation ◽  
Neural Dynamics ◽  
Geometric Representation ◽  
Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex ◽  
Magnitude Increase ◽  
Vector Magnitude

AbstractPrimates can quickly and advantageously adopt new behaviors based on changing stimuli relationships. We studied acquisition of a classification task while recording single neurons in the dorsal-anterior-cingulate-cortex (dACC) and the Striatum. Monkeys performed trial-by-trial classification on a rich set of multi-cue patterns, allowing de-novo learning every few days. To examine neural dynamics during the learning itself, we represent each rule with a spanning set of the space formed by the stimuli features. Because neural preference can be expressed by feature combinations, we can track neural dynamics in geometrical terms in this space, allowing a compact description of neural trajectories by observing changes in either vector-magnitude and/or angle-to- rule. We find that a large fraction of cells in both regions follow the behavior during learning. Neurons in the dACC mainly rotate towards the policy, suggesting an increase in selectivity that approximates the rule; whereas in the Putamen we also find a prominent magnitude increase, suggesting strengthening of confidence. Additionally, magnitude increases in the striatum followed rotation in the dACC. Finally, the neural representation at the end of the session predicted next-day behavior. The use of this novel framework enables tracking of neural dynamics during learning and suggests differential yet complementing roles for these brain regions.

scholarly journals Altered resting-state functional connectivity of the frontal-striatal circuit in elderly with apathy

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (12) ◽  
pp. e0261334
Author(s):  
Chizuko Hamada ◽  
Toshikazu Kawagoe ◽  
Masahiro Takamura ◽  
Atsushi Nagai ◽  
Shuhei Yamaguchi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Resting State ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
Underlying Mechanism ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Psychiatric Disease ◽  
Resting State Functional Connectivity ◽  
Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex ◽  
Aged People

Apathy is defined as reduction of goal-directed behaviors and a common nuisance syndrome of neurodegenerative and psychiatric disease. The underlying mechanism of apathy implicates changes of the front-striatal circuit, but its precise alteration is unclear for apathy in healthy aged people. The aim of our study is to investigate how the frontal-striatal circuit is changed in elderly with apathy using resting-state functional MRI. Eighteen subjects with apathy (7 female, 63.7 ± 3.0 years) and eighteen subjects without apathy (10 female, 64.8 ± 3.0 years) who underwent neuropsychological assessment and MRI measurement were recruited. We compared functional connectivity with/within the striatum between the apathy and non-apathy groups. The seed-to-voxel group analysis for functional connectivity between the striatum and other brain regions showed that the connectivity was decreased between the ventral rostral putamen and the right dorsal anterior cingulate cortex/supplementary motor area in the apathy group compared to the non-apathy group while the connectivity was increased between the dorsal caudate and the left sensorimotor area. Moreover, the ROI-to-ROI analysis within the striatum indicated reduction of functional connectivity between the ventral regions and dorsal regions of the striatum in the apathy group. Our findings suggest that the changes in functional connectivity balance among different frontal-striatum circuits contribute to apathy in elderly.

scholarly journals Language switching training modulates the neural network of non-linguistic cognitive control

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. e0247100
Author(s):  
Mo Chen ◽  
Fengyang Ma ◽  
Zhaoqi Zhang ◽  
Shuhua Li ◽  
Man Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Structural Equation Models ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Language Switching ◽  
Dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex ◽  
The Neural Network ◽  
The Impact

Bilingual language experience, such as switching between languages, has been shown to shape both cognitive and neural mechanisms of non-linguistic cognitive control. However, the neural adaptations induced by language switching remain unclear. Using fMRI, the current study examined the impact of short-term language switching training on the neural network of domain-general cognitive control for unbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals. Effective connectivity maps were constructed by using the extended unified structural equation models (euSEM) within 10 common brain regions involved in both language control and domain-general cognitive control. Results showed that, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex/pre-supplementary motor area (dACC/pre-SMA) lost connection from the right thalamus after training, suggesting that less neural connectivity was required to complete the same domain-general cognitive control task. These findings not only provide direct evidence for the modulation of language switching training on the neural interaction of domain-general cognitive control, but also have important implications for revealing the potential neurocognitive adaptation effects of specific bilingual language experiences.

Language in the Mismatch Negativity Design

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 176-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yury Shtyrov ◽  
Friedemann Pulvermüller
Keyword(s):  
Mismatch Negativity ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Language Function ◽  
Brain Response ◽  
Memory Circuits ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Context Integration

The article considers neurophysiological and psycholinguistic motivations for applying mismatch negativity (MMN) to studying the language function, briefly reviews the current evidence in the field, and offers some further directions for research in this area. MMN, a well-known index of automatic acoustic change detection, has also been found to be a sensitive indicator of long-term memory traces for native language sounds (phonemes, syllables). When comparing MMNs to words and meaningless pseudowords, we found larger amplitudes for words than for meaningless items. This was interpreted as a neurophysiological signature of word-specific memory circuits/cell assemblies activated in the human brain in a largely automatic and attention-independent fashion. This lexical enhancement of the word-elicited MMN has now been replicated by different groups using different languages and methodologies. We have also demonstrated that, using MMN, it is possible to register differences in the brain response to individual words and even to different aspects of referential semantics, confirming that the cortical memory circuits of individual lexical items can be revealed by the MMN. In other studies, we found evidence that the mismatch negativity reflects automatic syntactic processing commencing as early as ~100 ms after relevant information becomes available in the acoustic input. More recently, MMN responses were found to be sensitive to semantic context integration processes. In summary, neurophysiological imaging of the MMN response provides a unique opportunity to see subtle spatio-temporal dynamics of the neural processes underlying the language function in the human cortex in lexical, semantic, and syntactic domains.

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